Two Step
by delga
Summary: Colby/Megan. 3x18, Democracy & 3x19, Pandora's Box. "Megan isn't into easy," Colby mutters.


**two step.** (numb3rs)  
help; angst; megan/colby  
_"Megan isn't into easy," Colby mutters._

3x18, _democracy_ & 3x19, _pandora's box._ written for _**numb3rshet**_ fic challenge (10: help) and **2020challenge**. soundtrack: _two step_, dave matthews band. no copyright infringement intended.

--

_don't want your hand this time, I'll save myself; maybe I'll wake up for once_

--

**part i: crash. **

"You know—" he says, and she reaches for her blouse, closing her ears reflexively. She doesn't need to hear it. Not now.

--

The case looks simple enough, a bank robbery on the face if things, but Megan knows better to judge the book by its cover. From the looks on Don and David's faces, this is likely a good thing.

"It's never just a robbery," David shakes his head flicking through the autopsy report in his hands. "That'd be too easy."

"Megan isn't into easy," Colby mutters. She ignores him, but David gives them both a look before ignoring the comment. Megan's never been more grateful for David's reluctance to pry.

Charlie hurtles towards the bullpen as Don returns with his fifth coffee of the morning. Megan sets her jaw, thankful for the distraction. She can feel Colby watching her even as Charlie launches into another maths-for-dummies metaphor. It's too early for this, she thinks, and: _I need more caffeine._

She excuses herself; heads towards the break room. Colby's eyes follow her all the way out of the pen.

--

Colby catches her at the end of the day. She tries to be nice. She fails.

--

("You know," he'd said that morning, "you don't have to go." She'd tried to close her ears - she normally left before he woke - but she heard him all the same. She didn't answer. Left him in the bed alone and made a run for the door.)

--

"You're avoiding me now?"  
"It's been a long day, Colby."  
"Yeah, and we spent half of it in the same room."  
"Colby, I can't do this right now."

He sneers. "So it's okay for you to turn up at my door all times of night, but you can't look me in the eye the day after?"

Megan puts the box of bank personnel files in the trunk of her car, then slams it shut. "Look, it's been a really long day, I'm tired and—"

Colby shakes his head. "I guess if you repeat something often it enough you can start to believe your own bullshit."

"Did you want something in particular?"

(Pause.)  
(Sigh.)

She exhales; she deflates. She really needs more coffee.

"Go home, Colby."

--

**part ii: crutch.**

At the end of the longest day at the end of the longest week, he asks only this: _let me hold your hand_. Let me hold your hand before I have to let go, and you're gone.

Colby Granger is not a sentimentalist, but everyone needs a helping hand now and then.

--

The sun is too high in the sky for spring. He sits with his back to the wall, just by the car lot. Megan's lying on the small patch of grass, one hand across her face, her white blouse too bright for an early afternoon in April.

"I do stupid things sometimes. Not as often as I used to but, still."  
"I know."

She sighs, runs a hand through her hair. "I don't think you do."

"I do. I'm a stupid thing that you did. I get it. I just don't think—"  
"No, you're not."  
"Come on."

"You're _not_," she repeats, and she's quietly insistent. It should make him feel better. It doesn't.

--

He dreams about it, sometimes: the fit of her hip in his hand and the sound of her voice whispering lewdly into his ear. Colby knows he was a crutch, someone to lean on until Fleinhardt scuttled back from orbit, but Megan lifted herself from him. She let him go.

_It's not fair_, she says to him, _what we're doing, what I'm doing, it isn't right, and I know that_.

Colby never heard her: he let go because that was what she wanted.

--

"I do stupid things sometimes," she says, and then she says, "but you're not one of them. It's just bad timing. I have bad timing."

He doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything. She seems to appreciate that.

--

**part iii: crisis.**

A plane falls from the sky; a car has left the city.

"—but, I haven't been able to get a hold of Megan yet."  
"Yeah, she's on detachment to the DOJ. Don't ask me, I can't say any more than that."  
"I get it. You tell me, she'll have to kill me, huh?"

He's only half joking.

--

Megan comes close with good intentions, but they're laid to waste as soon as Colby sees her. His palms are flat across her abdomen as he pushes forward and she thinks, she thinks, she thinks a million thoughts but doesn't let them out, doesn't say a word, just pushes, pushes and holds.

Colby wants to hold her, too, and she feels overexposed, negatives held up to the light and burnt through, too transparent, and too easy to read.

--

"Stay, Megan— _stay_."  
"No."

--

Colby wakes to an empty bed and fresh wounds, runes marked into the skin behind his left scapula. He wakes frustrated and furious, and spends an hour throwing his fists at the punch bag in the lounge.

It's like thirsting, he thinks, like too many days under a hot desert sun. He thinks, he dozes, he dreams, and always of her, always in absence. (This: the space she should be sleeping in; these: the words she should be saying; this, and this, and this, the fleeting sense of her skin sliding up against him, all friction and heat.)

He takes a shower, lies down flat on the floor. He doesn't sleep.

--

_Please leave a message after the tone._

(This is the voice that echoes in his head. He hits cancel, dials again. When the robot answers for the fourth time, he throws his phone against the wall.)

--

The sun is high in the sky for this time of morning; it's too beautiful a day for people to die. But a plane falls from the sky, a modern day Icarus bent under the will of gravity. That's Fleinhardt's field, but even Colby understands the metaphor: two bodies of equal mass will surrender to one another and collide. Gravity is just another word for everything between two people.

A plane falls from the sky; a car has left the city. A plane falls from the sky and crashes, collides with the ground. He's the first to the crash site and the debris is scattered beneath his feet. The smell of burnt gasoline fills his nostrils and threatens to take him back in time. He holds still.

He isn't sleeping, but it's a beautiful day. It should make him feel better. It doesn't.

**end.**


End file.
